Related to both, there's a lot of fixed per-employee overhead, largely regulatory, meaning wage employees have a strict set of competitive hours. Something like 30% of payroll costs. Can't have everyone work 20 hours a week but employ twice as many people. Used to be exactly 40, but no overtime, and now it's slightly less than Obongocare full-time guidelines. Every gain in available leisure is instead converted to unemployment. Your employer can try to give you reasonable employment options, but then their lunch will be eaten by a competitor who doesn't.
"But I don't make minimum wage," you retort. Doesn't matter. The programmer has to be paid more than the roofer who is paid more than a janitor, because otherwise, why not take the simple indoor janitor position? Indeed, why not just half-ass flipping burgers? Because the janitor can't take a pay cut, the roofer can't take a pay cut, meaning the programmer can't take a pay cut. And then your employer is strongly incentivized to replace your overpriced ass with something that isn't price controlled, like foreign labour or a machine.
Speaking of price controls, there's low interest rates.
Take out a loan to fund a business. Pay 2% interest, because ZIRP. The firm makes 7% profit, so the loan is repaid, and executive salaries come out of the remaining 5%. Only, if inflation is 10%, the firm is actually losing money. They will have to take out loans to finance normal operations. Earnings are less than the price of new inputs, even before paying interest and dividends. Effectively the bank is subsidizing whatever they make. (And the bank can do this because the government is subsidizing it in turn.) This is a wealth furnace. It takes valuable inputs, makes something less valuable out of them, and the resulting heat and light makes the GDP look good. Because it destroys stuff, it causes prices to rise and its profits to fall until it goes out of business. The government is therefore directly destroying wealth for the purposes of giving sinecures to companies with favoured loan profiles. (E.g. Twitter, Reddit.)
When enough of these wealth furnaces go out of business at once, it cascades into a recession. Then the government lowers interest rates to 'stimulate economic growth.' The solution is private banks who can set their own interest rates. Which are illegal, or I'd start my own bitcoin-backed bank on Monday.
Finally, the government is nonproductive, and is now growing faster in absolute terms than the economy. Basically, each year, a bunch of stuff is made, and then distributed. The amount being made is growing slower than the amount the government is arrogating to itself, meaning real non-government wages (measured in terms of the amount of stuff they can buy) is falling. Jobs just barely capable of paying for man to live are being pushed into the 'need welfare' zone…joining the nonproductive government sector, one way or another, and forming an accelerating positive feedback loop.
But boy, 'automation' sure does make a handy scapegoat.
It lets you think that maybe there's a solution other than discarding democracy, which codes as discarding your culture's way of life.